Slide is one of the more recent Hard Case Crime novels – those wonderfully trashy hard-boiled crime novels. In this instance we follow the twin stories of “Slide” and “The M.A.X.” as Max Fisher likes to call himself.
The book itself, I discover, is the sequel to Bust which came out last year, also under the Hard Case Crime imprint.
The story in this instance begins in the middle of nowhere (well somewhere forty miles from Mobile, Alabama) as well as in Dublin. The main protagonists are hard men who kill… a lot. Bodies fly left right and centre, but the story moves apace, and you can be sure that in a few minutes someone else is going to get it.
But lest you think that this is just a vicious crime novel, there is a certain element of humour. At least two crime writers are killed along the way, and Hard Case Crime’s own “noirish” covers are referenced.
Great fun, and I’ll certainly be hunting out Bust from last year.
A bit of searching on Amazon seems to reveal that the two authors of this book are quite prolific. Ken Bruen, an Irish writer publishes one or more crime novels a year, while Jason Starr has also published a number of crime books.
I suspect I’ll be reading more of their work.